Poetry, as you have seen, is partly a matter of form. But rhyme and rhythm alone do not make real poetry. The word poet means maker. A true poet must thus be original. He sees in the world around him things that others do not see, and his mind is full of beautiful and elevating thoughts and pleasant fancies. Then, he must not only express his thoughts clearly, as the prose writer also must do, but he must express them in beautiful and appropriate language as well as in rhythmical form. Perhaps you have noticed that in the best poems words are chosen with great care; and that, on the whole, poets use more figures of speech than prose writers.

The poet James Russell Lowell has described the poet and his mission in the poem The Shepherd of King Admetus. You can surely find the poem, and you will enjoy reading it.

1 Used by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.

Another writer of delicate verse has told us in the two dainty stanzas given in the next exercise that it is not easy to express our best thoughts in the form of poetry.

Exercise 316. Poem

Read the poem thoughtfully and try to understand the comparison that it makes.

Caught 1

Birds are singing round my window.

Tunes the sweetest ever heard, And I hang my cage there daily,

But I never catch a bird.

So with thoughts my brain is peopled, And they sing there all day long;

But they will not fold their pinions In the little cage of song!

Richard Henry Stoddard.

You see that the entire poem is a single extended simile. What are the birds likened to? The difficulty of getting birds to enter a cage?

Why do you think the poem is called Caught? Do you suppose the author was glad that he tried to express his thought in verse?

Scan the poem. Describe its rhythm.